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This is my first post, as I've been a lurker for quite some time. So go easy on me. *grin*

Based on numerous factors and returning a last year's C-series earlier this year, I finally went with a LED D7000. I couldn't self justify the jump in price for the D8000 putting it over the $3K mark. I also liked the bezel design more on the D7000 and of course the picture is great.

Now, I thought I'd share what I have seen from the beginning on the unit that at first you wonder if it's just your eyes, or an artifact of the incoming picture signal. I've been watching mostly cable SD/HD TV, but verified that it's with any source like USB/HDMI/comp. There are some mottled vertical brightness issues on the left and right thirds of the screen for medium-low to low brightness levels.

Just before calling in for service, I downloaded the test patterns from this forum to verify what I was seeing. (Kudos! Excellent resource and well done by the way!) Indeed, what you might see as an example in my Blu-ray player screenshot, is where the background should be a solid uniform blue background from left to right, except for the wave, but isn't. The test patterns 5% gray ranges showed the same, visible up to about 40%.

Samsung support on the phone and the technician that visited for the warranty work confirmed that there are some problems like this on the LED D7000/8000 models. I'm currently awaiting a replacement panel which should be coming to be installed in about a week.

*** Has anyone else experienced this and what outcome did you have with Samsung, if any? ***

My display settings are in movie, backlight 10, contrast 90, brightness 45, sharpness, 10, color 45, tint 50, and most other things set to off or neutral. The pictures below are done in manual DSLR camera mode on a tripod with some ambient sunlight from the window and does actually reflect about the real view of what is seen sitting in front 10 feet away.

Screen is a UN55D7000 and version: H302

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here are many thousands:

[edit: um, er... it complains that I can't post a URL until my 3rd post... so I uploaded just 5 and included a broken URL instead for the rest...]

flickr (dot) com
/photos/65238760@N05/sets/72157627205244724

Thanks!
-- Rob

p.s. This is in no way a bash of Samsung or these great screens, hope that this was an early production issue and I trust/hope this will be fixed soon!